Scoring Mixer

I believe one of the standard rates is $300/hour plus renting the studio but that's more for tracking. Keep in mind that most of the top scoring mixers don't have their own studios. I think with just mixing then you can get a bit more of a fixed rate rather than hourly. Some people charge more (close to $1000/hour) and others charge less (I charge $50/hour). If you're in the UK then Jake Jackson might be a good choice to look into. I think he has nice rates for working out of his little studio.

Member

You're looking at £400 - £1200 per day for an experienced engineer, depending on weight of credits and busyness. Most people have their own setups these days, although perhaps not if you require 5.1. 10 mins of TV music should be very doable in a day.

Unlike the pop or dubbing world, no-one's getting $1000/hour (but one can dream...)

Eric Watkins

Senior Member

Find a talented new comer with his own gear. Going to a top pro you'll be competing with labels and the such that have deep pockets. Really the best thing to do imo for an up and coming composer is to find either a young assistant to a top engineer or a guy trying to find work that will go that extra mile to make your music sound top notch. In the many years that I've used various engineers for this or that project I've always been surprised at how well I work with people that aren't considered "top" pros yet but that did a lot to help a brother out.

Senior Member

An awful lot of composer/orchestrator/musicians are mixing everything, themselves, these days and getting excellent results. Besides, if you're mixing for TV, you're most likely going to be supplying stems, anyway, and someone else will be doing the final tweaking.

Member

As with anything in the creative field, a (relative) handful of top people can command high rates. Of course quality can be found for less, but if you want a track record of serious credits then it'll likely cost.

The good news is that it won't cost the $4-10k per track that the top pop guys command.

Active Member

Jedi in training...

There a lot of factors... in the box vs outboard, turnaround time, genre and track count for the project... A mix engineer with Billboard credits in a major city will run you at 1000+ per song at an indie rate...
Right out of high-school i was sitting in on a session (around the economic downturn) and an indie single mix from a grammy nom/multi platinum engineer was 1500... That was for his friend who had no deal at the time and they'd been friends for a decade... You can get a good mix engineer's assistant to do a mix for about 500 though...

Space Explorer

FWIW: I mix music for a living since about 30 years now. I ask for daily rates rather than for hourly ones. Usually these "days" encompass 10 hours of work, sometimes more, hardly less. I charge for "my work" and my stuff (software and selected outboard hardware). Studio rent will be charged in addition to that, which means that clients quite often ask me to come to their place (which I'll happily do if it is up to par acoustically).

As a rule-of-thumb I charge 50 Euro per hour, plus VAT. If we talk about an album or a complete score, I will often agree upon a flat fee for the whole production, which makes things easier for both parties, but still these hourly rates are a good benchmark.

Personally I decided to do rather a few well-payed, interesting (and musically rewarding) jobs than many cheap ones.*) Keeps my work-life-balance in shape ... ... instead of poorly payed gigs I prefer to do free mixes once in a while for a student's project or an upcoming artist.

Sidenote: It might be worth mentioning that these rates remained more or less unchanged for many years now, which means that our actual income has dropped significantly since the raise of internet piracy ...